Sorry I have not blogged in a really long time. I have not really had much time been crazy busy. This is Rome or as the Italians call it Roma. Rome was probably my favorite place of the trip. We stayed in a really nice flat. The people who owned it were young and great people. It was a younger couple. The ladies name was Mitra and she is one of the top tour guide of Rome. Her husband Fabio is a chef and has cooked all over the world. We stayed in Rome for five days. We went to the Pantheon, the Vatican or St. Peters Basilica, The Trevi fountain, The Spanish steps, The fountain of the four rivers,
Over the next few blogs I will be throwing a lot of Christian and Art history at you.
St Maria Majore Basilica was the first one we went to. A Basilica is basically a church.
This is what the ceiling looks like.
This is the really fancy Alter that is at the front of the cathedral.
This is a picture so you can see how long the basilica is.
In most Basilicas there are crypts on the bottom floor. In the crypt popes and members of senior religious leaders are buried. This is looking down the stairs
This is what the ceiling looks like. It is made of a lot of tiny tiles made of gold and semi precious stones and marble.
This is one of the tombs in the church where a pope was buried. This shows the elaborate sculptures used to create an extraordinary dedication and honor.
The ceiling of a dome had paintings of the story of the bible.
This is an example of one of the statues with all the paint on it. Most statues have lost their paint and this is an example of how they would have looked with all the paint.
The Colosseum we never got to go inside the Colosseum because one we didn't have enough time and two we didn't really want to. We did not want to because it is a place that people were murdered, eaten alive, burned to death and there were so many other places to go.
This is one of the carvings made of marble from hundreds of years ago. It was around one of the tombs.
This is the sign of the pope. The two keys represent the key to unlock heaven and hell. The crown on top represents the pope who is considered to be god like. He is like gods personal helper. The shield or code of arms represents the family the pope comes from. So in some churches it's different for example if the church was built for a specific pope then his family's sign goes there.
This is a tomb with this amazing marble carving of Marry and Jesus.
I think that is a different church.
This is a spiral staircase in the Vatican. No one is allowed to use this staircase except for the popes and people of higher power that work with the pope. It was made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He as an artist in the late 1400s early 1500s.
This was a flower shop that was outside. They had so many flowers. They were so beautiful.
This is one of the white roses that we at the flower shop.
This is Vittorio Emanuele 11 Monument.
Every single time I saw something with an elephant on it I thought of Mia :)
This was a Roman holiday and this park was full of people. They were playing music, BBQing things, playing games, and just hanging out.
These are some of the ruins in Rome. Everywhere in Rome you could dig down a few feet and find the old Roman city. One of the things that Mitra our tour guide said was "the Romans love to recycle and build onto of stuff".
This is a cool sculpture carved of marble. The Pantheon was one of the oldest building we got to see and it was not buried under the ground. It has a dome that has a hole in the center where the water falls through.
This is the Fountain of the Four Rivers also done by Bernini. The pope of the time didn't much like Bernini but the pope wanted a fountain for this square. So he set up a competition for the artistis to submit ideas for a fountain. He said that Bernin could not apply. The buliding behind the fountain was owned by the pope's neise. Bernin was smart he made a solid gold smaller replica of the fountain and gave it to the niece to put in her foyer. When the pope came to visit he saw the fountain and said he loved it. He asked who the artist was and the niece said she would never tell. He said no please tell me I want this for the fountain. She said do you promise to make it the fountain are you sure you love it. The pope said yes yes I promise. The niece said Bernini. And the pope was like oh no. So in the end Bernini got to make the fountain for the square. But one of the sculptures where his niece lived is looking away from the fountain and looks as if she is disgusted. All the sculptures of the fountain are looking away from the house as if they don't like the building. The tow different artists did this because they did not like each other.
This is the outside of the Vatican. The columns and sculptures here are also made by Bernini and his students.
This was one of the stores down town. The reason I took this picture is because the whole roof is covered in glass bottles.
This is one of the Gelato place's. It had over 100 flavors.
We found the Ferrari store in Rome so we went in an took this picture of one of the race cars.
This is Fabio and Mitra. This is the only picture we have of the two. Fabio is dancing and Mitra is opening a bottle of wine. They came over for dinner and Fabio taught me how to make Italian pizza
This is the Trevi fountain!!. The pope originally commissioned Bernini to build the Trevi
Fountain, however, the pope died prior to completion of the
fountain and the project was stopped. A century after the original plan
was stoped Pope Clement XII hired Nicola Salvi to finish it in 1732 to
design a fountain to be built in Trevi Square. Salvi’s design uses many
of the elements in Bernini’s original design.
